It rained!

After almost two months of little to no rain, we just had a downpour, so things are looking up. That is, until you look at the paper, which tells us to expect almost no rain until June. Water is getting low, but we'll be alright...there are lots of sources, people just have to get in gear.

2.24.2010
I’m currently showing Planet Earth, the documentary series, to my students, and we’re watching the first episode. My favorite moment of the whole series is when the Great White shark strikes a seal – if you’ve watched the series, that scene should be emblazoned in your memory. It’s the most amazing two seconds of slow motion action ever captured on film, in my opinion. Anyway, what really struck me was the difference between my own and my students’ reaction to this scene. As a generally landlocked Northwestern American, I’ve never considered sharks a threat to my health, so my response to seeing thousands of pounds of killing machine leaving the water and chomping a seal is along the lines of a football fan watching a defensive tackle leveling a receiver: “Woo! Yeah! alRIGHT.”

In contrast, my students become rapt and quiet when it begins to show the sharks’ feeding frenzy, with only an occasional agitated exclamation to break the silence. Watching their alert faces from my desk at the front of the class, I am reminded of the Gelata monkeys of the mountains featured later in the series when they are confronted by a predator. I realized that even though, statistically, falling coconuts are almost certainly more dangerous than shark attacks here, the students still harbor a healthy, real fear of their power and razor teeth. When my ancestors were running from lions, tigers and bears (oh no!), I suppose the ancient Marshallese were doing their best to avoid the tiger sharks instead. The most frightening presence on land here is the cockroaches.

2.25.2010
The sensation of drifting off to sleep in warm, just-out-of-the-dryer sheets was a pleasure of which I knew nothing until college. At Dartmouth, I usually did my laundry sometime between 11 pm and 1 am, for various reasons, including saving energy and having forgotten to do it the previous 10 days. Just when things were getting desperate, I would gather all my laundry together in an artful ball (this was before I permanently borrowed a basket from a fraternity brother), making sure socks and other small articles were secured somehow in my bear hug. If I was feeling particularly ambitious, I would throw my sheets into the bundle – I won’t bore (disgust?) you with how often this actually happened, but true to the cliché of a college man, it had usually been far too long. Two hours and a few trips later, I could dive into toasty, clean sheets that would pass any mother’s inspection.

To return to the hot, humid present, I just pulled my sheets out of the dryer at 11 pm (the same ones, in fact!), and realized that this little joy of life that brought me brief pleasure in New Hampshire will cause nothing but sweaty suffering at six degrees north of the equator. It’s late and I need to get to bed, but I’m fairly sure that the waves of heat radiating from my bed will mean there will be a gingerbread-man-shaped pool of sweat in the middle when I rise tomorrow morning. Yeah, I’m ready to return to my down comforter at 47 degrees latitude.

Februuuuuuaaaaary

Haven't had a lot of time to write, with our Field Director paying us a visit and sitting in on our classes. It's been a loooonng month, in spite of its deficit of actual days. We're hoping to get out of town this weekend to visit a nearby village and relax a bit. That said, here are a couple unrelated thoughts.

2.7.2010
Does the noise and energy of high school aged kids wear other people down? I realize that part of it might be due to being an only child, home-schooled until eighth grade. My childhood was relatively solitary, admittedly a bit lonely at times, but blissfully quiet. And high school is….not that. When my boisterious 11Bs enter the classroom soon after lunch – no, scratch “enter,” “bounce into” would be more accurate – I feel my pulse quicken and the sweat bead on my neck.

They’ve usually liberally indulged in Kool-Aid beforehand, and the tart saccharine smell mingles with the odor of their hair oil, sweat and overpoweringly cheap perfume. If I had high school to do over again…I’d skip it. It probably doesn’t help that on the Myers-Briggs test, I scored firmly in the “introvert” side, meaning large groups of people don’t so much energize me as bleed me dry of my desire to live.

2.9.2010
I had a great dream last night about finding my recently lost Bic ballpoint pen, with the added bonus of another red pen for correcting. It is entirely pathetic how happy I was in that dream. I sort of assumed pen technology was about the same everywhere in the world, until I was forced to use the crap they give teachers here. I never knew pens could suck so much. Drop them once, and the little ball bearing pops out, leaking red ink everywhere and rendering them entirely unusable.